Welcome to Hyperion Records, an independent British classical label devoted to presenting high-quality recordings of music of all styles and from all periods from the twelfth century to the twenty-first.

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Recordings

Graham Johnson is simply the greatest living authority on French song; an artist whose innate feeling for the music is combined with prodigious scholarship. Following his many wonderful recordings in Hyperion’s French Song Edition, Johnson turns t ...» More

This release marks the first in a new series charting the complete songs of Francis Poulenc, performed by some of the greatest singers of the day and accompanied by the exceptional Malcolm Martineau. Later volumes will feature several works that h ...» More

Poulenc takes this strange poem, bizarre without boasting the word-music of Apollinaire, from Le laboratoire central; indeed he had originally intended to set it as part of Le bal masqué in 1931. The final verse of the poem—an envoi preceded by the rubric SIGNATURE—casts Jacob himself as the cornet player; mention of the Pont d’Iéna adds an indefinably Parisian glow to the music. The rest of the scenario has to be recounted in matter-of-fact style as if this level of Bohemian madness and dysfunction were an everyday aspect of life in the city. The child suffering from crabs is a relative of the disadvantaged baby described in the earlier Jacob setting Berceuse.

Did you know me newspaper-seller
at Barbès and under the metro
to persist concerning the Institute
I would have needed courage,
my novels have neither top nor tale
and I have no character.

Did you know me chestnut-seller
at the corner of the rue Coquillière,
I gave my apron back, the other is green.

Did you know me ticket-seller,
latrine-cleaner.
I say it without bitterness or spite
assistant at the gingerbread fair,
defender at the police court,
officer, as it is called office
at le Richelieu and la Paix.

Poulenc went through various crises in his career where he believed himself written-out with no more music in him. For Parisiana he selects two poems that revel in the predicament of the artist who is past his best, almost down-and-out; and the fellow-feeling between Jacob (in this case the opening poem of the collection Rivages, 1931) and the perpetually insecure Poulenc is palpable. The failed writer in this song responds to the question ‘Don’t you write any longer?’ with a list of his various employments—seller of newspapers and chestnuts on the streets, lavatory cleaner and finally washer-up of dishes in the scullery—the ‘office’—attached to the famous restaurant, the Café de la Paix. The bravado with which this recital of failure is recounted is in the great tradition of working-class defiance central to the tradition of popular French chanson. Maurice Chevalier would have been at home here.

Did you know me newspaper-seller
at Barbès and under the metro
to persist concerning the Institute
I would have needed courage,
my novels have neither top nor tale
and I have no character.

Did you know me chestnut-seller
at the corner of the rue Coquillière,
I gave my apron back, the other is green.

Did you know me ticket-seller,
latrine-cleaner.
I say it without bitterness or spite
assistant at the gingerbread fair,
defender at the police court,
officer, as it is called office
at Le Richelieu and La Paix.